Head All Unkilter
by bluewonderer
Summary: You're foolish to think they're separate, your days and your nights. You become what you pretend to be. (Or, where Matthew is a changeling and a Namer, and The Leanansidhe is generally delighted in her duckling's unfolding tragedy.)
**Head All Unkilter**

 **i.**

When she finds him again, he is buried alive.

Meandering her barefoot way over concrete shards, she weaves claustrophobic passage over and under the rubble while giving wide, begrudging berth to any jutting metal. The veil of dust is absolute. The Leanansidhe whispers cold light into her path and pauses to admire the the way it bleeds through blackened crevices and tunnels until it illuminates her little pet duckling. She only sees small expanses of red and black peeking out from underneath two great slabs of concrete and she's not very sure which end of her little duckling is which. Pouting, she toes what could be a shoulder or a thigh or maybe a foot.

"Leanansidhe," a strained, faint voice greets her from beneath the wreckage.

She shivers at her name. Her little duckling is always so polite. "I thought you'd died," she huffs, reproachful.

A cough from below. Slight, testing movement. "I'll…be more careful."

Mildly irritated, she squats down and idly twirls a finger through her long red hair while she waits. "You should." The little duckling is _hers_ , and she'll never forgive him should he become Death's before she's through with him.

They're in the basement and the bomb went off two floors above them, causing a total of five floors to collapse. Her duckling was saved by his luck, or at least by the well-fallen beams and pillars which are currently preventing countless tons of concrete from falling on him.

More tentative movement, but this time one of the concrete slabs displaces on Matthew's fragile little duckling bones. He strangles on a scream and, as always, swallows it back into silence. But she knows her silly duckling, knows how loud he screams to himself on the inside, knows he's been screaming since he was a boy. He coughs again, wheezes. Blood is starting to ooze gently from beneath the rocks.

The Leanansidhe reaches down with a delicate white finger and begins to draw patterns in the blood.

"Would you like me to free you?"

It's a long moment before Matthew catches his breath again. _"No."_

She giggles at him, but even she's not sure if she approves that he remembers what she taught him or disapproves of his pride and stupidity. "My silly duckling," she says fondly all the same.

He groans in response and bucks with an unexpected surge. A chunk of rock slides off his back, revealing his head and shoulders but not much else. His shoulder blades heave underneath his red and black suit, his breaths kicks up dust. He coughs again, blood and spittle flecking her unshod toes.

"What _are_ you wearing?" She traces the way his mask outlines his bloody nose and chin, smiling when he unconsciously leans into her touch. She runs her knuckles along the rough stubble of his jaw, her brows knitting together. "You are no longer smooth of face."

He gags on a short, derisive laugh, weakly trying and failing to work another section of rubble off of him. "Well, it's been a few years—" his breath catches painfully. A broken rib? "—Or sixteen." She loves the accusation and the question in his voice, because she can tell how he tries to hide it.

 _"White shields they carry in their hands,"_ she sings, the sound expanding eerily.

 _With emblems of pale silver;_  
 _With glittering blue swords,_  
 _With mighty stout horns._

 _They scatter the battalions of the foe,_  
 _They ravage every land they attack,_  
 _Splendidly they march to combat,_  
 _A swift distinguished, avenging host!_

Curiously, she reaches over and grips his side, giggling when his lips part around another quiet scream. At least two fractured ribs, then. She removes his mask and runs her fingers through his thick, dark hair. She traces a large, glistening wound on the back of his head. His dewey, unseeing eyes roll back as he teeters on the edge of unconsciousness.

pHe coughs painfully, startling himself. "Is that where you've been?" He asks her when he catches his breath, voice soft and lost. He's never afraid of her, never betrayed by her when she inflicts pain or when she leaves him. What a puzzling little beast. "A war?"

"Among other plots." She frowns. She thought he was too addled to even try eking information out of her. She didn't think he cared to know, and maybe he didn't. However, information was power and she'd taught him too well. "You can't con me," she murmurs, using her fingernails to scrape flakes of blood from around his eyes. He smiles ruefully at her but it fractures into exquisite agony. He presses his forehead into the ground and pants through it.

The Leanansidhe pants for an entirely different reason.

"Are you hurt?" She coos, lightly scratching the back of his neck, the skin slick with blood trickling from his head. When she last saw him he was a smooth, willowy boy. She feels a sense of loss, but also a thrilling twang in the pit of her stomach.

"Only…in my…everywhere." He answers as she runs a hand over his strong shoulder and quivering arm, brushing small rocks from her path. She hisses when she sees the iron around his wrist, the chain attached to it disappearing into the debris.

"Bastards," she spits. "Cowards. _Humans_." The material of her duckling's suit is torn around the shackles and she can see where his pale, pretty skin is bubbled and raw from the iron. She reaches down to tear off the rest of the concrete crushing Matthew, but he jerks.

 _"No,"_ he barks around ragged breaths.

"You should take payment in their blood for what they did."

"On my own," he insists, but his efforts to move are even weaker than before. "Your help…is not freely given."

She bunches the folds of her long dress into her fists. "Nothing is," she agrees.

"Nothing _fairy_ is."

She frowns. That wasn't her wise little duckling from years ago. The one who smiled and charmed but never, ever trusted. " _Nothing_ is," she repeats. Humans like to _claim_ they're different, but they're not. They're as much bargains and words and machinations as the fae. Her godson and duckling are fools to believe otherwise. _Well_ , she thinks primly. _They_ are _so very young._

The Leanansidhe had come to visit her duckling for a purpose, because the recent times and her beloved Queen Mab demanded that she execute everything with a purpose. She came to this cramped, broken city armed with secrets, with information her duckling _wouldn't_ and _couldn't_ refuse. His parentage. The Nevernever and what could be his place among the fae. She would tell him, he would owe her, and though she refused to believe that she or the Unseelie Court were in a position where they _needed_ the debt of a changeling—even _her_ cute changeling—she'd have an extra debt in her pocket.

She wasn't The Leanansidhe because she wasted opportunities.

She wants to laugh because now that she's here with her secrets and dramatic reveals, her duckling put himself in a situation where she didn't have to spend the information she'd worked to acquire. Another piece tucked into her pocket. It was good to be thrifty.

Besides, her little duckling was in pain and, no matter how fascinating it was to watch, it did not please her. Perhaps this time he'd agree to let her turn him into one of her Hellhounds. He'd be safe and cared for. And she could pet him as much as she wanted.

"The men who did this to you escaped, I passed them on the way here, though they did not see me."

Unfazed, Matthew grunts and stops struggling all together. She resists the peasant urge to roll her eyes. Of course her twisted little duckling wouldn't be driven by something as _sensible_ as revenge.

"The mortal authorities were closing in on them and they panicked, so they took surviving victims from the explosion as leverage. The nice human police, of course, parted the way for them." As easily as parting one's legs and the ones who did this to her duckling in turn fucked the police just as easily and got away to _live_ and repeat their actions another day. Humans, especially human rules and human law, were nice, and nice didn't mean _good_.

Matthew raises his head, his eyes as blank as ever but his teeth bloody and bared.

"Foggy? Was Foggy with them?"

She tilts her head. "Who is that?" She really doesn't know, but she lets a smile creep into her voice like she does. It's not _quite_ lying.

"He was…trying to evacuate everyone." Her duckling's voice is so wonderfully wrecked. She feels another twist in her gut and revels in it. "While I came down here to stop the bomb."

"While you were beaten and clapped in _iron_ , left for dead."

"It's been a long day. Did you see a man? Longer blond hair?"

She shrugs, though he can't see it. "I know not, I cared not to notice." She will remember this newfound human attachment in Matthew. It's somewhat disappointing, but no less entertaining, to see her duckling so soft. Soft, like nice, is also an invitation to be fucked over.

"They had men and women. Perhaps ten of them."

He rallies and strains beneath the rubble. It grates and rumbles but does not move.

 _"Leanansidhe,"_ he says without hesitation. "Free me, and I will owe you one favor."

The Leanansidhe reaches down. "I accept your bargain."

 **ii.**

Once upon a time, The Leanansidhe finds a blind thirteen year old changeling as he cons a businessman on the streets of New York. The businessman is handsome with thick black hair, a gleaming gold watch, and lines around his brows etched from years of a cruel scowl. A mortal who uses others, one The Leanansidhe could see striking a bargain with, who could be useful to her until he's not and she unravels him piece by piece.

The Leanansidhe watches as the little changeling picks the man's pocket but not with some sleight of hand. The blind little boy smiles, spins sugar with a meek voice, weaving a subtle glamour with every nervous gesture and brave but teary tremor. The businessman has his mouth open, scathing words on his tongue, before he suddenly blinks and swallows. He sways as if pushed by wind and then hands over a thick stack of cash, eyebrows drawn in puzzlement.

"Is this enough? I have more."

The changeling touches the man's wrist, ignoring the money.

"I couldn't take it—"

"No, it's the least I could do. Please—"

"Thank you, you're so kind, I just wanted someone to listen—"

"Please, take it, I want you to, I want to feel like I'm helping—"

"Well I could take a small amount, for dinner and some shoes, but not all of it—"

The businessman only adds more bills to the stack. The boy takes it, removes his glasses to show tears welling in his unseeing eyes, and _hugs_ the man. The businessman seems to crumple in on himself, appearing for a moment as small on the outside as he is on the inside. He grasps the boy, almost lifting him off his feet, and _thanks_ the blind changeling for taking his money.

The man earnestly guides the boy to an ice cream stand, wanting to please him, and the boy graciously accepts the cone the man buys for him, blushing and manfully wiping at his eyes. When the businessman leaves, the boy throws away the uneaten cone.

Changelings are uninteresting and weak. A blight on her kind. Their pain an old, worn story of being caught between two worlds. But she found him, and she doesn't believe in coincidence. She ties her shadows to his. She follows him.

"You're interesting, for a changeling," The Leanansidhe greets him finally at the close of day after watching him effortlessly scale the side of a building. The sunset is almost tangible, bringing a chill wind into the city. The Winter Solstice is just a month away and already she feels her power waxing with a familiar mania.

The boy lives on a roof above the end of an alley. His roof juts against two slightly taller buildings, creating a nook that is sheltered from the both the weather and prying eyes. He has a nest of flat cardboard and two thick blankets. He has three small boxes, two stacked to the side to serve as a chair, one hidden for safekeeping underneath his nest of blankets. In this one he puts the money next to a well-worn rosary and some balled-up shiny red fabric. From one of the other boxes he takes an apple which he bites into with mechanical obligation.

"I'm not sure what you are yet," the boy responds, the juice of the apple sparkling on his full lips. "It's _impossible_ , but you can't be human." His sunglasses are off, his eyes a plain brown and yet she's only seen eyes as captivating among other members of the Courts. She reaches out and runs her fingers over his eyes to test for a glamour, giggling when his eyelashes tickle her.

"Your hair," she murmurs as she runs her hand through it, smiling when he leans searchingly into her touch. Only a lonely little boy, beneath all of the mystique. "It's rare for a changeling to have human-colored hair. Or," she admits, "be blind." She rests her hand against his throat and feels his pulse, fluttering like a young bird in a cage.

The little boy reaches up, earnest. The last of the sun bounces off of the corner of his hideout and his glassy eyes seem to draw in all of the light. He smells of apple, which reminds her of cider and home. Amused, she leans down at his unspoken request, lets his hand run through her long, curly red hair.

"A changeling?" He asks, voice soft and sweet and broken. She in her turn leans into _his_ touch when his fingers dance across her face, cup her cheekbones. She sighs when he runs a thumb where her jaw softens to her throat and neck.

"The offspring of a fairy and a human. Your fairy sire must be quite interesting. Do you know who it is?"

He fails to cover a flash of confusion. She frowns, wary. "You don't know what you are." Her soft touch at his shoulder becomes deadly as she grips his throat, squeezing until his breath cuts off with a high whine. "You don't know of what I speak." She bares her teeth at him, angry and insulted that he gained knowledge, power, from _her_ without her consent. The boy gasps futilely, dropping his apple. It rolls slowly until it bumps cool and wet against her bare heel.

He doesn't fight her, doesn't grip her arm and claw at her skin. His eyes look up to her, missing her face by half an inch. His face isn't contorted into a plea, his pretty lips don't move in silent begging. Maybe something's broken in him like it is in her, but he doesn't even have the decency to be afraid.

She lets him go and laughs heartily over his choking gasps. "You conned information out of _me_!"

"You're a…fairy," he guesses, testing the word. "It's crazy but you have to be. Your heart sounds different. Slower, almost silent like… stone. Like—like snow falling on concrete."

She tilts her head, thinking that his lips are so full and pretty, and he so fragile and small, it puts her in the mind of ducklings and little breakable duckling bones. "Tell me your name, and then speak of what else is different about me."

His ignorance of his heritage is obvious when he freely gives her his name, Matthew Murdock, and she savors how the power of his name expands within her. Then he tells her what his other senses see about her. He tells her about the burning smell of clean ice, a song in the air that makes him weep but he couldn't begin to describe, hair as soft as spider webs, skin as smooth as bone, eyelashes like insect legs, a voice as wide and beautiful as the blue sky—or what he remembers of a blue sky, anyway.

She teaches him how to put his words in a song. How to focus his will into his words. By the end of the long night the power woven into his song about her is palpable magic.

Twice she finds him, the second time only one month later. She is on a short errand for her Queen, but she looks for him in the streets for two days, thinking him dead when she didn't see the flash of his pale skin and the glint of his glasses. On the eve of her parting she indulges her curiosity and stops by his hideout to find him half-naked and bloody, rank with infection and fever.

The Leanansidhe has found the changeling twice, and she believes in nurturing an investment. So she sits in his cramped nook and pulls his little fragile duckling bones onto her lap. She surrounds him with her hair, a thread of winter, a stitch of shadow and a touch of the moon. She sings to him, the song he created for her on the long night of their first meeting.

In the morning he is healed enough to wake and live through the rest of winter, if he be wise, but she is long gone.

She finds Matthew a third time in the spring. He's taller, still thin but winter-blessed with whipcord strength. He's even more charming, and she wonders why he doesn't have New York eating out of his hand. She frowns to consider that he may lack ambition, which means her future manipulation might be more difficult.

But she can't deny how he shines bright with better bright beneath amongst the dirge of humans, like a ruby in the sun, incarnadine and unmistakable. But she is The Leanansidhe, she knows the hearts of men, and she can see the shadows on Matthew's are already long and deep.

She finds him in Central Park, far away from his neighborhood, a place she's amused to find out is called Hell's Kitchen. There's a festival, bright colors and the smell of grease and sugar. There's even a maypole with colorful, elegant ribbons. Shouting. Laughter. She stops by to regard the curiosity, thinking of festivals from not too long ago, ones that used to spring up around a hanging or a beheading. Now there's face painting and balloon animals.

Matthew is a wisp of wind, a flicker in the corner of an eye, hair flying about his head, shining like sun dappling on a lake's surface. He's casing the crowd, selecting his victims with careful ease, appearing at the elbows of anyone who seems like they might be morally reprehensible to his standard (or maybe some abstract human standard, not that she knows or cares what standard that currently is). She wonders if moral reprehensibility is among the things Matthew can hear or smell.

He stumbles into one man, picks a money clip while he drops his cane. The man chokes on a curse while Matthew tearily apologizes. As soon as the man looks away Matthew pirouettes, plucking a flower from a nearby stand before stumbling into a severe-looking woman. She takes longer, five minutes and a heart-wrenching, sickening smile. Matthew offers her a flower, the woman offers him a stack of folded-up bills. Then he's off again, choosing his marks while singing under his breath.

 _—Catch and carry._  
 _Ash and Ember._  
 _Elderberry._

An aging man, eyes hardened, dressed in a stifling pinstripe suit too hot for the day.

 _Fallow farrow._  
 _Ash and oak._

Another man, bulky shoulders and blood shot eyes who's shadowing a young woman and her daughter. Matthew doesn't pause to encounter him. Just takes his wallet, pocketing meager, wadded bills before handing the rest over to a police officer and worriedly claiming to have heard some nefarious plan to hurt a woman from the owner of the wallet.

 _Bide and borrow._  
 _Chimney smoke._  
 _Barrel. Barley—_

"Who taught you that?" She asks him, suddenly in his path so he has to skid to a stop to avoid crashing into her. If he's surprised he doesn't show it. She pouts, feeling a little robbed.

He debates his words for long minutes. He'd gleaned from their first meeting, in between all of the questions she left unanswered, the potency of words and now he deals and hoards his with miser jealousy, which is quite amusing when juxtaposed with his painful prowess at lying. As a result, Matthew works with half-truths and evasions, just like a fairy. Eventually, he decides he can part with a full and honest answer to her question.

"I just know it. I think someone I knew used to sing it, but it must have been forever ago because I don't remember them at all. Only the song." He hums the rest and she hums with him, her heart swelling to hear the notes of the old, old song sung in the clear, piping voice of a youth.

He must have heard it from his fairy parent. The Leanansidhe wasn't the least interested in who that was before, and told Matthew as much when he asked. But now she finds herself intrigued with the mystery.

Before they part the third time, she spies him slipping into an aging building in his neighborhood. St. Agnes's Orphanage. He leaves the stuffed animals he stole from the festival on the beds of the really young children while they sleep. He deposits most of the cash he picked up into the donation box.

Her little changeling is ambitious after all. And a foolish, bleeding heart. But she could shape those things.

Her undertaking in New York for her fair, dread Queen lasts another two years. The Leanansidhe drifts in and out of the city as her business demands, but her blind changeling finds her each time she lets him (and once or twice when she didn't intend to). He follows her, quite like a little duckling, everywhere from the seedy underground to high-class galas and parties.

At each place he grifts into, her little duckling usually manages to swindle the most despicable men and women he can find with nothing more than charisma and a self-deprecating smile. Only once she witnesses it backfire on him and watches as Matthew is hauled away into a dark alley by three men. She peers down from the window above the alley when he breaks their grip and avoids their hands, spinning around them and pointing at each one while she wonders if _"Magpole, maypole,"_ is sliding off his honeyed tongue in his youthful. He leaves them without harming them, easily shimmying up a nearby fire escape and disappearing amongst the maze of roof tops.

There is one time when a throng of street boys corner Matthew. His shelter is just above him but he doesn't run to it, doesn't reveal it. It takes long, long minutes before the boys land a blow hard enough to knock Matthew to the ground. One rears back, kicks him in the face, bloodies teeth, breaks sweet lips. Matthew cries out, not in pain or fear but in _rage_.

Quicker than thought, Matthew reaches out and breaks the kicker's leg. Before the other boys even realize what's happening, her duckling is back on his feet and breaking another boy's nose. He dislocates the last one's shoulder. Their tears are mixing into the filth of the alley when Matthew returns to the kicker, who's dazed with pain, and deliberately breaks the older boy's jaw with bloodied knuckles.

After the boys are gone, she dances around her duckling, clapping excitedly at the gratuitous violence, at the _revenge_. She grips his broken hand in hers, digging her thumb between grinding duckling bones. He winces but continues to tilt his face to her with an absence of fear.

"My little duckling," she says out loud for the first time, naming and claiming him. She'd found him three times, she'd saved him from Death. She found him when he'd been cast aside. Taught him the power of things when no one else saw what he could be. He belongs to _her_. Not to Death. Not to humans. Not to himself.

 _Finders, keepers._

She presses her lips against his hand, whispers a word and bends her will, healing him with magic just to see the look of awe and devotion brighten his features.

 **iii.**

His head is raw and swollen, pounding _bum-ba-bum_ and rushing _whooshwhooshwhoosh._

And his wrists are burning, melting away, _why does it hurt so much? Make it stopmakeitstopmakeitstop pleasenomore._

Matt stumbles, confused, knees buckling, stomach rolling. The world shatters and gathers and shatters again. The chains are still on his wrists but he's on a rooftop—or is he still in the basement?

 _"Gonna chain you down here, hero—"_

 _They're dragging him by his wrists which burn, why are they burning?_

 _"Make you wait for the building to crush you—"_

 _Dizzy, tilting, everything too loud and too soft at the same time but still his brain won't shut up, won't stop making lists. Rank body odor beneath spicy deodorant. Leftover burger for dinner. Cigarette smoke lining the seams of an old and worn leather jacket. Vodka still on the breath from the night before._

 _His wrists—what's on his wrists, what did they do? He curls protectively over them, exposing his back to a vicious kick he hardly feels because his wrists, the smell of cooking flesh is coming from his wrists what's happening what did they do?_

 _"Real shame you won't be able to hear their screams from down here."_

 _Receding footsteps (size 9, size 11, size 12, sneakers, leather boots…). He struggles, pulls, shouts (voices of maybe two hundred people upstairs, feet running toward the exits, high heels and boots and tiny, tinkling heartbeats ohGod there are kids up there, the whir-tick of a timer, ohGodFoggy)._

 _Incomprehensible, saturating noise. Dust clogging his nose. Static clogging his ears. The whole of the world rocking, tilting, falling down on his legs then his back and he'd never, ever thought the world would be this heavy._

 _And, above the sound of the splintering earth, Matt counts each and every scream._

He remembers. Cool fingers, soft hair, a voice as fearsome as time. A fairy, a memory from long ago. The Leanansidhe. She wanted to break the iron around his wrists but he didn't let her so he wouldn't forget the two hundred screams.

The wind—how did he get up here? He doesn't remember, maybe he lost time, maybe he's dreaming _it hurtsithurts make it stop_. The wind bites his cheeks, dries the blood on his skin, tightens his world into focus for a sharp moment. The wind means a roof and not the the basement beneath the world. The fairy stands close, observing, always finding him like—like Stick. Like he's a lost, discarded thing to be picked up and abandoned _overandoverandover—_

Her fingers touch his lips. He sways toward her, wanting the touch from his memories at the same time he shuns it. Her touch means either pain or comfort because she doesn't know the difference between the two.

"Why are you standing still, duckling?" Her voice, breaking beautiful, warbles between the _bum-ba-bum_ and _whooshwhooshwhoosh_ of his head. He presses the heel of his hand between his eyes, opens his mouth to breathe out a silent scream _why is he here standing in the sky it hurtswhodidthiswhy is he here he's always been here his headhis wrists it hurtsithurts._

The wind carries the scent of Foggy's aftershave. The caramel candy he has in his left coat pocket. Blood mixing in with the exhaust fumes.

 _Foggy._

The first step is black and shaky. He says something, voice clawing up his throat unbidden and echoing into the sky. The wind picks up, blows at his back, curls around his ankles. The Leanansidhe's slow stone heart surges and her laughter escapes into the night.

"A namer!" She cries, kissing his cheek and then spinning around him in a wild, wild dance.

Matt repeats what he said, a name, a fragile and terrible name. The wind shoves him, pulls him, and he's running again, always running, the iron on his wrists hurting so much it doesn't hurt at all, swollen hands and agony flicker-climbing from his head down his spine. The chain between his wrists clinks and clatters and he finds himself humming with the music it makes as he sprints.

The wind carries him now and _Foggy's alive and not dead from the explosion, have to save Foggy nomatterwhat_ and still his brain won't _shut up_ , won't stop cataloging the endless night and endless world around him, everything bright and sharp and always, always _too much_.

Thunder, the taste of lightning. Sharp bouquet of trash and refuse from below. Heartbeats. Laughter. Rattling keys. Chorus of dogs barking. Clanging dishes. Chinese restaurant with a mildewy kitchen. Smooth pavement below his feet. Heart-dropping nothing and then another roof, older and rocky. A swollen knee. Singing bruises. Small cuts on his calves and thighs, a gashes still weeping on his back and left hip. Two fractured ribs. Cracked vertebrae. Labored breathing. Liquifying wrists.

 _head hurts makeitstop_

The Leanansidhe. Bare feet slapping over rough concrete and broken glass. Not chasing but running with him. Long hair snapping like a flag in a storm. Her dress murmuring silkily against her thighs. She laughs and it's cold electricity, magnetic and repellant, _magic_. Dizzying spatial awareness because how can a presence be bigger than the matter that holds it?

Her Hellhounds baying, the pants of three or sometimes ten. A snarling, primordial pack led by Matt and the wind.

The rooftops are becoming sparse just as the van with _Foggy's aftershave, caramel candy, blood, Foggy_ and the car leading it make a turn and slow down. The police are still ten to fifteen minutes away when Matt and The Leanansidhe perch on a building five stories above the vehicles.

His balance falters _what am I doing here, all swollenandraw and made out of pain_ he thinks at the same time as he thinks _four abandoned buildings, ten hostages in the van, Foggy, seven targets, FOGGY_. He pitches forward, awareness blinking out like changing scenes in a dream.

 _caught by the wind and a fairy's hand_

Matt shakes his head, groans and sways, shudders out a painful, rasping breath. He presses a thumb into the burnt remains of his wrist and the pain brings brief, precious clarity. Next to him The Leanansidhe's slow stone heart creeps and he wonders if its anything like the sound of a continent-sized iceberg wandering the ocean.

She got what she came here for—his debt. Matt isn't sure why she's still here. He holds out his hand. "My mask."

She places it reluctantly into his hand. "You're the only human I know who can _demand_ in a non-demanding voice. The mask is _ridiculous_ ," she sniffs disdainfully.

"I didn't choose the horns, that was the creator's interpretation." Breaths quickening in the van. Whimpers. Salty tears. Copper. Gun oil. Four—five guns.

 _Foggy._ Foggy's voice, scared but insistent. "We're stopping," he's whispering to the other hostages in the van. "And they _will_ kill us, we've seen their faces. So we stick to the plan. As soon as we hear them we hit them with the doors. You run and you scatter, they can't chase after all of us. And whoever makes it… you make sure these bastards get what's coming to them."

Shaky murmurs of agreement.

 _Foggy._

"The horns _are_ foolish." The Leanansidhe is saying. "And the colors aren't your most flattering." Her fingers brush against his back, she tucks her nails into the gash on his hip, the pain takes his breath away. He leans into it. "But I was talking of the mask itself. Of hiding."

"What I do isn't exactly lawful," he reminds her. "I have an identity, a life." Karen's perfume, Karen's terrible coffee, the thrill of a closing argument, the smell of paper, the sound of Foggy tossing the softball up and down and up and down when he's thinking, _pleaseGodnotFoggy_ just give Matt this one thing.

He fingers the chain links between his wrists like rosary beads. Then he puts on the mask.

The fairy snorts indelicately. "You're a fool to think they're separate, your days and your nights. You become what you pretend to be."

Her voice is full of omen, but Daredevil's already leaping off the ledge and landing quietly in the shadows.

Four men (loose shirts, old jeans, sweat, tang of cocaine) have exited the car and are heading toward the van. Two of them have guns in their hands. _How am I going to stop them? There's no plan, no cover, Foggy is locked in a van there is no key, broken ribs and blood loss and something's wrong with my head, keep losing time._

And then he hears it from the car, not quite a voice at the same time it could be nothing else. It's shouting from the half-empty gas tank, quivering madly, full of potential energy and _insistent_.

Daredevil speaks the name he hears, just as terrible and elusive as the wind's.

The fire stills, like it's raising it's head in attention when Daredevil utters it's name. And then the car explodes into an inferno with a great, bestial roar.

The four men are blown clear, stunned, but Daredevil is already running for the van. The driver's door is unlocked, the three men in the seat still unmoving, captivated by the heat and flame before them. Daredevil takes advantage, reaching in and grasping (old denim, grease stains, blood but not his—blood from one of the hostages _Foggy_ ) and hauling the driver onto the road. He ducks an elbow from the next man, fumbles slightly when feeling for the keys before pulling them from the ignition and—fifteen seconds before the men in the van get out with their guns, fourteen seconds, twelve seconds until the driver reaches in the van for his weapon, thirty seconds before the four from the car find their feet again.

The key calls out to him and he finds the door handle and then the lock with his fingers—ten seconds, nine. He hears the men in the van grasp for their door handle, hears the driver groan and fumble in the floorboard for his gun.

He throws open the door, ducks two kicks from Foggy and another hostage. "Go!" Daredevil shouts at the same time Foggy says, "Jesus, it's Daredevil. New plan. Stay together and all of us just might make it. Jamal, Nick—you guys help carry Mrs. Milford."

They're spilling out of the van into the night and the three men are coming together around the right side. Daredevil hears them releasing the safety of their guns.

Foggy lays a hand on his shoulder, takes a breath but no words come out. Daredevil nods, pushes Foggy toward the left of the van and Foggy goes, pushing the hostages in the same direction.

 _thank you God, thankyouGod_

Daredevil charges into the three oncoming men, sliding under a bullet and into the legs of the middle one (tall, gangly, racing heart). They end up in a heap, the other two men reaching for Daredevil's shoulders to drag him off. He rolls, kicks out, runs toward the burning car and the other four targets, the three giving chase.

He hears the footsteps of the hostages (high heels, bare feet, tennis shoes, boots, blood, dust and ash, aftershave and caramel) recede into an alley and emerge onto the next street over.

A gun cracks—he didn't hear the warning hiss of the trigger in time—and the bullet only grazes his side but it's enough to knock him off his feet.

A hard, heavy step. A heavier boot to his chest. He retches, cracked ribs screaming. Another blow to his kidneys. One glances off his thigh. He's reaching for the first boot when he hears the wind gust in warning near his head but it's already—

Black. Dizzying, infinite black. No sight no sound no taste no feel, just the black and plummeting into it and—

His head _makeitstop why does it hurt where am I what is—why does it hurt I can't see—Dad, Daddy, make the world_ shut up—

Ringing, sirens and footsteps and breathing and heartbeats and laughter and—

"Stand up, Devil."

 _ringing, make it stop, makeitstop—_

a slamming door two streets over and the cars and horns and sirens a million heartbeats that _never shut up—_

He coughs, chokes a mouthful of blood, spits it out and screams silently into the pavement because if he throws up there will be awful taste and awful smell and the sound of his own stomach boiling and he'd never stop throwing up until he's inside out—

 _the goddamned fucking ringing—_

He gets a knee under him.

Steel-toed boots crash into his side, pavement against his back as he gags through the splintering agony. Rattle of a chain and they're pulling him by his wrists, laughing at his groans, dodging when he sluggishly kicks out.

He tries to, but he can't hear the wind over the r _ingingpounding whooshwhooshwhoosh_. He can't hear the fire, only feels the scorching heat on his face.

But, by God, _of course_ Daredevil can still hear the two hundred screams.

He rolls and struggles to his feet. The seven men let him, jeering and laughing as he sways, buckles, and spits out a mouthful of blood. But the screams in his head are (always, always, _all the fucking time_ ) louder than their laughter so he grins at them. He wonders if his smile looks as razor-sharp and bloody as it feels.

He raises an arm, extends his index finger and thumb until it's in the shape of a gun. He hums to the ringing in his head. And he sings, words blooming out of the dark, older than his first memories.

 _Maple. Maypole._  
 _Catch and carry._  
 _Ash and Ember._  
 _Elderberry._

He spins in a circle as they close in. The fire sputters and roars. The men have stopped laughing. Their steps are slow, hesitating. Their breathing uneven, hearts shuddering.

 _Fallow farrow._  
 _Ash and oak._  
 _Bide and borrow._  
 _Chimney smoke._

He hears the way their bones creak as they grip their guns tighter. Daredevil only rattles the chain still around his wrists.

 _Barrel. Barley—_

He springs without coiling, reacting to the pull of a trigger before he registers hearing it, spins mid-air as the bullet hurtles past. He lands where he started, somehow managing to stay on his feet. Behind him a man cries out before abruptly going silent. One down, devastating but not fatal (not for eight more minutes, anyway, the time it'll take for the sirens to get here). Six to go.

The others freeze, unsure. Three drop their guns and go for knives instead. Daredevil only points at them again, turning slowly. Up above, he can hear The Leanansidhe squeal and clap girlishly.

 _Stone and stave._  
 _Wind and water—_

One man (flannel, onions, cocaine, _Foggy's aftershave_ ) lunges at Daredevil's back, the wind shrieking around the blade in his hand. Daredevil flips backwards over knife and man, wraps the iron chain around his neck, laughs at the choked off cry and presses bloody lips against the man's ear,

 _"Misbehave."_

 **iv.**

Foggy finds him eight minutes later and two streets and two blocks upwind of the burning car and the eleven—thirteen—police vehicles and four fire trucks and five ambulances and two circling helicopters.

"Jesus, Matt," he mutters as he approaches, ducking into the nook between a dumpster and a fire escape where Matt hid himself. "You can't just go around taking off your mask. There could be security cameras. The city is crawling with police and, any minute now, the FBI and they aren't as blind as you are."

Matt huffs a long breath out his nose, laughing without laughing because _ohGod his ribs his head his everything_ and because he sometimes does forget that the world isn't as blind as he is (what would that world look like, he wonders, a whole world unable to see the blue, blue sky).

He jumps when soft, gentle hands prod around the raw areas of his wrists.

"It's alright, Matty," Foggy says softly. And then, "fucking shit, Christ, goddamned bastards." A pause and then, _"Fuck."_ For good measure.

"Matty," Foggy's voice calls from somewhere above the tingley, floating, _whooshwhooshwhoosh_. "Matty, stay with me."

"Where am I going?"

"They're expanding the search, gathering evidence, making sure no one got away." Foggy says, exasperated. "We have to leave."

"Okay," Matt agrees, head lolling against the wall.

He startles awake, nerves and muscles quivering uncomfortably, when he hears the chains around his wrists clatter to the pavement next to him. "What?" He flexes his fingers, moves his wrists, the absence of the iron numb and heavy.

"You gotta stay awake, Matty." Foggy says and then, "Huh. Found a key while I was sneaking away from the ambulance. What're the chances it went to your—what? Iron handcuffs? Are you _serious_?"

"Keys aren't very complacent," Matt murmurs, or thinks he does, his jaw is tired and his tongue is cotton pillowing in his mouth.

"Sure, Jesus," Foggy's pressing his hand underneath Matt's arm, against his upper ribs. He leans into the touch. "Fuck, so much blood."

"Not really. Are you okay?"

"Shut up," Foggy snaps which doesn't clarify anything.

"Sorry?" His head, suddenly heavy, pitches forward. "Thought I smelled blood earlier. You okay, Foggy?"

"It was _your own blood_ so you just shut your face. What the actual—can you get up?"

"Yes," Matt says, and tries moving, but his head only lolls to the other side. "Not really." And then, "sorry?"

"Fan-fucking-tastic." Warm, soft fingers prodding at his wrists. "Seriously, were their _iron_ handcuffs dipped in _acid_? What the fuck, crazy terrorists?"

"No acid. It's the… fairy blood?"

A pause. "Oh." And then, "'kay." And then, "Matty, you have to sit up, please."

Rough pavement, _pain_. "What?"

"You survive a bomb and collapsed building to take out seven terrorists, but you can't listen when your best friend tells you to _get the hell up, Matty, the cops are going to find out who you are if you don't fucking move_? Nope. That makes too much sense—Fuck it."

Which is all the warning Matt gets before Foggy hauls him off the ground and up onto his knees.

"You're heavy—I know, I know, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, Matty. But, Jesus, what else am I supposed to do? I have to get you out of... _Breathe_ , Matty, please, what are—are you _screaming_?"

Matt wakes up on silk sheets. His sheets. His bed. Clean soap, cedar dresser, warm scent of daylight through the windows, muted laundry detergent, sterilized gauze soaked in drying blood in his living room, latex gloves in his kitchen trashcan.

Caramel candy next to his bed.

Foggy's breathing heavy and even in a chair dragged from the living room—Matt reaches and touches to be sure. Foggy smells like Matt's soap with ash and blood underneath.

His head—his head is a little fuzzy and growing fuzzier. He listens and smells and waits, but he doesn't sense The Leanansidhe, the being with the slow stone heart who walks two worlds—the one who told Matt he was _made_ of two worlds. She's gone, receding like a tide. She'll be back to collect her favor.

Foggy shifts, beer and caramel on his exhale.

He listens to the susurration of Hell's Kitchen, the city that looked inside Matt and found Daredevil.

The room expands and shrinks. Beer and caramel, silk and soap.

Finders, keepers.

 **end.**

 **Note: This was a response for a prompt on the daredevilkinkmeme. The prompter wanted to see Daredevil with a bloody lil' smile singing "Maple, Maypole" from Kingkiller Chronicles and being generally tragic and chilling.**

 **I've implemented snatches of phrasing from Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles throughout this, sort of like Easter eggs. "Head all unkilter", "bright with better bright beneath", "ruby in the sun/incarnadine", "we become what we pretend to be" I think covers most of the phrases I borrowed. Also, the concept of calling on the name of the wind and fire is in the Chronicles, too.**

 **The Leanansidhe is from Dresden Files by Butcher. I borrowed her because I didn't think I could write Felurian or Bast from Kingkiller. She refers to her "godson" once, which is Harry Dresden.**

 **I do not own or pretend to own Marvel/Daredevil, The Leadnansidhe/Dresden Files, or "Maple, Maypole"/phrases from the books/Kingkiller Chronicles. I am very thankful to have briefly explored their worlds.**


End file.
